The Kokoda Campaign
World War 2 History of the Kokoda Trail
The Kokoda Spirit

Part 8 of 8

OVERVIEW SUMMARY

Between 21 July and 16 November 1942, Australia lost over 600 killed or died of wounds during the battle of the Kokoda Track. A further 1,000 were wounded. Some of the dead were buried along the track or in graveyards at places like Efogi and Kokoda. After the war all the graves of those killed in Papua were brought into the Bomana War Cemetery near Port Moresby.

Private Bruce Kingsbury VC, 2/14th Battalion, lies buried there, as does Lieutenant Roy Mackay, 2/31st Battalion, of Campsie, NSW, killed in action on 11 November during the last engagements on Kokoda at Oivi and Goiari. The names of those missing in action were recorded on the Port Moresby Memorial at Bomana and among them is Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Key, commanding officer of the 2/14th Battalion, who was executed in enemy hands around 10 September 1942.

THE KOKODA SPIRIT

Since World War 2, many people have written about the Kokoda campaign, a campaign now seen as perhaps second only to Gallipoli in its significance to Australian history. In a way the original Anzacs were never able to do, hundreds of veterans of the Kokoda Track have, in oral histories and video interviews, told their personal stories of the hardships and the sacrifice of those who died there. And like Gallipoli, the story that has most gripped the popular imagination is that of the endurance of wounded men and the care given to them by mates, medical personnel and stretcher bearers. It is no coincidence that the largest war painting commissioned by the Australian Government about Kokoda was William Dargie's Stretcher bearers in the Owen Stanleys. It shows Papua New Guineans tending a wounded Australian as they carry him along the Kokoda Track.

What words then, can sum up such an important national experience? Immediately after the war Colonel Kingsley Norris wrote an article about the war in Papua New Guinea. His narrative ranged over all the major campaigns from 1942 to 1945 but he captured what for him had been the essence of Kokoda in these words:

The courage and cheerfulness of these casualties were wonderful - sometimes almost incredible ... That no known live casualty was abandoned ... is a magnificent tribute to the fitness and fortitude of these men. Time and rain and the jungle will obliterate this little native pad; but for evermore will live the memory of weary men who have passed this way.

Army Organisation:

In the Pacific War the army was structured along the following lines although it should be remembered that during the Kokoda campaign units were under strength to due manpower problems, wounds and the ravages of disease:

• Division: The highest level combat unit in the army structure. It is commanded by a Major General and comprised 14,000 men.
   

• Brigade: 3 Brigades form an a Division. Each one commanded by a Brigadier and comprised 3,300 men.
   

• Battalion: 3 Battalions form a Brigade. Each on commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel and comprised 850 men.
   

• Company: 5 Companies form a Battalion. Each one commanded by a Captain and comprised 140 men.
   

• Platoon: 3 Platoon form a Company. Each one commanded by a Lieutenant and comprised 39 men.
   

• Section: 3 Sections form a Platoon. Each one commanded by a Corporal.

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